It Helps Her on Her Way, Gets Her Through Her Busy Day

I use a Snow Peak Collapsible Coffee Drip as my daily pour over device. It works reliably for 5 years now, takes a beating and travels well, but there is one issue that the CS-113 has. It is square. most coffee filters will come close to fitting in it, but they flop about; and when wet, hang significantly below the dripper and often below the rim of the mug you are brewing into. Snow Peak has nice origami-esque instructions for how to fold a filter to fit, but it drops a lot of volume out of the filter. Additionally, while I am a fancy lad, I also tend to be pragmatic. Sourcing v60 filters will set me back ~7 USD / 100 from amazon and are not available for delivery from the grocery store near my house. A comprable pack of #2 cone filters is 2.09 USD, locally. Over the last few months I have been fiddling with and refiddling with how to fold these so that they work well with the CS-113. Here is what I came up with


First, fold the vertical seam. This will crush some of the welting at the bottom which holds the bottom seam in place and can be a bit fragile so avoid using fingernails here.


Next, fold the bottom seam to the opposite side of the filter from the vertical seam. If you fold them both to the same side, it works most of the time, but creates a weak point in the filter that can result in grounds in the cup. By folding to the opposite side it reinforces the spot and I have yet to have a blowout there knock on wood


Pop open the filter and place your index finger and thumb in the corners of the filter and pinch. This will make a little puppet shape that you could draw eyes on and spend the rest of your day talking to, if society where you are has collapsed to complete isolation (2020 has been hard, don't judge me). So after a few moments of Philty's acerbic wit and condescending attitude about how I am wasting my life and putting off real work, I decide to get on with making coffee.


Make a crease from the corner of each side of the 'mouth' and run it all the way to the top of the filter. you now have a square filter that will fit reasonably well into the CS-113 and hold enough coffee to make ~500mL of the good stuff (I start at about 33.4g for 510mL have gone as high as 45 without overflow, but the pours will be shallow).


Before and after shots of the filter in use. bed remains fairly flat and even through out the pour. If you choose to use agitation, make it fairly shallow to avoid the center seam. This configuration will tend to have 2 drip points but drop times are consistent with my other configurations ~4:30 for 500mL.